


Obsession

by pergamond



Category: Tennis no Oujisama | Prince of Tennis
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-26
Updated: 2016-09-26
Packaged: 2018-08-17 11:06:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8141570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pergamond/pseuds/pergamond
Summary: [An educational psychologist tests the middle school attendees for the High School Selection Camp.]Kawakatu, an educational psychologist for the Kantō Region of Japan, pinched the bridge of his nose and tried to pretend, for a few precious moments, that the two boys seated in front of him had dematerialised. This was a fanciful thought for an unimaginative man, but hearing these two speak was enough to drive magical disappearing acts onto his Amazon wish-list.





	

Kawakatu, an educational psychologist for the Kantō Region of Japan, pinched the bridge of his nose and tried to pretend, for a few precious moments, that the two boys seated in front of him had dematerialised. This was a fanciful thought for an unimaginative man, but hearing these two speak was enough to drive magical disappearing acts onto his Amazon wish-list.

This job had appeared to be an easy one for the psychologist; assess the middle school students being considered for the High School Representatives Selection Camp to confirm they were up to the pressures the more senior environment would present. It was text book stuff. The tick-sheets on Kawakatu’s clipboard had boxes for rating immaturity, pressure from home, physical health and academic consistency. At this point in the interviews, his only use for the painstakingly prepared sheets was that carefully ripping strips off the bottom was vaguely therapeutic.

The interviews had began amazingly well. Kawakatu had thought he would be free by lunchtime after he had finished his pleasant chat with the well-spoken blue haired young man, whose touching story about his climb back to health after a debilitating illness spoke for his aptitude, despite his modesty. After the last member of the same team left his office, however, Kawakatu was a inch away from calling the secured hospital unit to take that same boy away. No one who led those students was anything other than highly dangerous. The desire to see his children grow up stopped him. It would take six months and two bottles of anti-anxiety drugs before Kawakatu would stop obsessively scanning obituaries to see if any of the deceased’s death had involved a tennis related activity.

Pleading a headache, he called a halt to interviews that day and returned to his home where he set about burning an old photograph of his biology teacher. How the vindictive man had appeared in the place of the middle scholar with the white pony tail, Kawakatu did not know. He only knew that the tears of humiliation had poured down his face as they had when he was twelve, and that the feeling of inadequacy was later compounded by the contemptuously polite golf player and coolly analysing boy with the closed eyes. He was unable to eat the dessert his wife had prepared and when he slept, he dreamt of decapitated Kendo dummies with demonic green eyes.

Unshaven and tired, Kawakatu had decided to interview the captain of the next team last. His worry and exhaustion caused him to snap at the first student he saw, a tall boy who had looked so taken aback at his abrupt tone that guilt had driven him to apologise profusely to the next candidate. This had resulted in a furious glare from beneath a reversed baseball cap and every question he produced being labelled as “lame”. Perhaps the boy had a point, since the next student was unable to regain consciousness during the entire interview. The last meeting before lunch was mercifully fast, largely because the determined looking second year had walked in and slammed down an alarm clock on the desk, telling Kawakatu he had exactly ten minutes. Kawakatu had looked up at his honey brown head and finished in seven.

Lunch had consisted of three onigiri and two aspirin.

His university text books (which Kawakatu was now on the verge of trashing) declared that every person had something to teach a psychologist. In the case of the next two students, this was rather literal as Kawakatu ended up in an hour long debate with a bespectacled young man on a controversial nuance in Brontë literature. After being reduced to open mouthed fish faces, Kawakatu was certain of two things; Jane Eyre really was a transsexual and that the boy’s vision was almost certainly 20/20. He then proceeded to learn, by way of his next subject, that his bookshelves were not weight bearing.

In contrast to this, his next visitor said nothing other than an occasional “usu”. With a desperate attempt to make his notes look somewhat orderly, Kawakatu rephrased his questions from “Please describe your home life” to “You would agree your home life can be described as ‘normal’?” Possibly it was embarrassment over this flagrant misuse of questionnaires that resulted in him physically bowing to the team’s captain and finding himself searching the entire building for fresh blood red orange juice, no ice.

Thoroughly frazzled now, Kawakatu arrived on his third day to be greeted by a mercifully quiet student who performed an excellent interview until he stooped to pick up his racket on the way out. After his exit, Kawakatu was left to shakily ponder whether the said ‘BURNING’ posed any direct threat to the tennis camp.

His next meeting was with the captain of that day’s team who eyed Kawakatu’s bedraggled form and told him not to let his guard down. The exact wisdom in that statement became apparent when Kawakatu innocently drank the juice offered to him by the following boy to help restore his energy.

Lunch that day was spent in the bathroom.

A smiling individual who answered all Kawakatu’s questions perfectly was his first subject after lunch. Kawakatu waved him off with a half smile and wondered why he felt a strong urge to fail the student’s psychological assessment. His next candidate offered him no recognisable language and chattered about people called Ochibi and Fujiko who were most certainly not on Kawakatu’s list. In irritation, he stamped the red “fail” across his sheet and threw the boy out. Teary eyed and drained, he then proceeded to sob into a dark haired student’s shoulder, pouring out his rapidly increasing doubts about the whole profession. When he recovered his composure and thanked his green eyed friend, he found the sheet on which he had failed his team-mate had vanished. Possibly his wild eyed searching for this was the reason for his next diminutive client’s comment of “mada mada dane” although Kawakatu couldn’t shift the feeling that despite all the hundred ways the interview could have progressed, it would still have ended in the same phrase.

He waited for the next student ... and waited ... and waited. Eventually, he stepped out into the hallway to discover his last two candidates in a head to head argument involving insults directed at snakes and peaches. Sighing in resignation, Kawakatu gave them high marks for physical energy, low marks for academic vocabulary, zero marks for maturity and called it a day.

Now it was day four. After pacing around his house for five solid hours, Kawakatu had passed almost everyone. How could you choose between them, after all? Better they all go to a camp many many miles from his home than be on the streets. These two, however, he could not pass. Even after everything he had seen, the two boys in front of him stood out as having serious problems. Gritting his teeth, Kawakatu lifted up another card on which a silhouette was shown.

“Two faces or a lamp?” he inquired of them.

Large brown eyes blinked up from under the white cap of the figure slumped on the sofa. “It’s Tezuka’s house.”

A contemptuous smirk crossed the face of the taller boy sitting straight backed on his right. “You are a fool, boy,” he remarked. “That is clearly Tezuka’s glasses.”

“Che, what do you know, Monkey King?” came the brassy reply.

Kawakatu sighed and looked at the clock. Two hours. 120 minutes. 7200 seconds. 1 topic. He looked down at his notes and wrote three letters “OCD”. Someone else could figure out whether that mattered in tennis.


End file.
